Auschwitz survivor Israel Ernest of Tel Aviv will be 86 years old in December. / Debbie Hill for USA TODAY

by Rose Foran, Special for USA TODAY

by Rose Foran, Special for USA TODAY

TEL AVIV - Israel Ernst's face contorted as he leaned forward in his chair and recalled the taunts of the German guards: "You will all be turned into meatballs."

"Hell was on Earth," Ernst, 86, said as he recalled his imprisonment in Auschwitz, the Nazi concentration camp in Poland in which 1 million Jews were murdered, along with tens of thousands of Polish dissidents, Romas and others.

The creation of Israel was in part a response to the genocide, and Israelis want to make sure such a mass murder can never happen again.

In a historic move, the Israeli legislature, or Knesset, announced Friday that it will hold a special session in Auschwitz on Jan. 27, the 69th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. The Knesset has never before convened outside Israel. A majority of its members will take part, including Arab-Israeli members.

Yuli-Yoel Edelstein, speaker of the Israeli Knesset, said the timing of the event is crucial, coming as it does on International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

"The state of anti-Semitism is very troubling," he said. "I know that every year the numbers are rising. This is the tendency - they are stable or rising."

In the Arab nations of the Middle East, Israel is consistently vilified on state-run television and in mosque sermons, and schoolbooks often portray Jews in insulting ways, according to the Middle East Media Research Institute, which tracks Arab media.

Even in Europe, where the Holocaust happened, an anti-Semitism survey conducted on behalf of the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights in nine countries found that 26% of Jews have suffered from anti-Semitic harassment at least once in the past year.

It found that 34% experienced such harassment in the past five years; 5% reported that their property was intentionally vandalized because they are Jewish, and about 7% were physically hurt or threatened.

As a result, 40% to 50% of Jews in France, Belgium and Hungary said they were considering emigrating as they no longer felt safe, according to Ynet news.

Iran's leaders, who are pursuing a nuclear program that the United States suspects is aimed at making an atomic bomb, have threatened to eliminate Israel. Hamas, a terrorist group on Israel's border in Gaza, has threatened to wipe Israel off the map. Hezbollah, a terrorist group in Lebanon, has also called for Israel's elimination.

About 30 Holocaust survivors die every day in Israel, and there is a sense of urgency in the Israeli government to remind the world that the annihilation of Jews must never happen again.

"We're coming to stand with (the survivors) and to support them," said Jonny Daniels, founder of From The Depths, which aims to preserve the memory of the Holocaust.

Daniels said the event will not be political but a commemoration and reminder of what happened. In attendance will be members of the U.S. Congress and politicians and dignitaries from Germany, Sweden and Australia.

Holocaust survivor and Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel plans to return to Auschwitz for the first time in nearly a decade for the event.

"There is a potential of really having an honest discussion about how we make sure nothing of the kind happens again in the modern world," Edelstein said.

During World War II, Auschwitz became a main site for the Nazis' "final solution," an attempt to exterminate the Jewish race. Transport trains from European countries invaded by the Nazis delivered Jews to the camp to be gassed to death in specially rigged shower rooms. Others starved or were worked to death, their bodies cremated in ovens.

Ernst spent four and a half years at Auschwitz and a labor camp in Friedland, Germany. For most of his life, he refused to speak about it with his children.

"I thought that they would never believe me," he said. "I didn't want to cause them unnecessary heartbreak."

Ernst lives on a peaceful, tree-lined street in north Tel Aviv with his wife, Bracha, 77, one of the 200,000 Holocaust survivors who made their way to Israel after the war.

He said he feels obligated to describe his story in detail. He talked of the stench of the corpses piled up daily at the camp, the wooden barracks and bunks and his determination to keep trying to live another day.

Ernst said he finds the threat of anti-Semitism "terrifying," but he does not see a similar threat today that prevailed 70 years ago.

"Now it's a completely different story," he said. "Jews in Germany and in Europe had no protection. If they were intimidated, if they were threatened, they could not defend themselves. We are not helpless like we once were."

He said his grandchildren have gone to Auschwitz on school trips. As for him: "I cannot go back."